Certified by the National Strength and Conditioning Association as a Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) and as military fitness trainer, Stew has trained hundreds of students for Navy SEAL, Special Forces, SWAT, FBI, ERT and many other law enforcement professions.

His articles and eBooks at PoliceLink.com can help you achieve your fitness goals, whether you’re a beginner or advanced.

I am pleased to start writing a fitness column for PoliceLink.com that will enable me to communicate with law officers on a regular basis, but also, I hope to assist our Heroes of Tomorrow and today with maintaining their fitness level and career longevity. It is an honor to write about our nation’s military, law enforcement, and emergency medicine personnel and I look forward to this relationship with PoliceLink.com.

For my first article, I have some quick fitness tips that should help many officers fit fitness better into their lives when the days are long or if you do not have much time for fitness. Also, I would like to ask the community for some assistance and helping PoliceLink.com and me create a chart that has all the PFT requirements / exercises and links to webpages of every State police department in America. See the link below. I have started on the list, but need help as some of the page have changed and some information was difficult to find through common search engine.

So, if you have any information on a certain state’s PFT requirements, please send them to me at stew@stewsmith.com

Fitting Fitness into a Busy Day of Public Service

Many of today’s military personnel are continuing public service professions once out of the military and performing jobs in the law enforcement, fire fighting, and emergency medicine. These daily heroes are also continuing their military service as Reservists or National Guard members, thus having to take physical fitness tests every six months to stay operational. Typically, the professionals who serve in our towns across America as police, fire fighters, and EMTs, are the very same people who have the constitution to serve in the military reserves or National Guard as well. Thanks for your Community Service Police Officer, Firefighters, and EMTs!

It is difficult to fit fitness into a busy day or night of shift work, family duties, and many other life’s distractions. Fitness is vital to our public servants to aid in performance of their job and enables them not to unnecessarily risk their lives or the lives of the people they protect. Here are some ideas to help with quick fitness routines when time is short.
Stay Flexible – Keep stretching through the day. You never know when you have to go from sitting to sprinting when on duty. When in doubt at least major muscle groups of the legs / lower back.

The Jumping Jack / Pushup Routine: This one gets the heart going and pumps the arms and chest. I use it to wake me when the need to stay alert is required. It only takes 3-5 minutes!

Repeat 5-10 times: Jumping jacks – 10 reps / Pushups – 10 reps – try not to rest other than touching your toes after jumping jacks and walking your hands out in front of you and slowly place yourself into the pushup position. I usually do this before a workout to get the muscles loose, but it is a great way to take a few minutes and get 50-100 pushups. Do this through the day every hour or so and you will have several reps of pushups done.

Mix in legs with above workout – Add squats in between jumping jacks and pushups for a great full body pump that only takes 5-7 minutes. I recommend doing 10-20 reps of squats or ½ squats when doing this workout.
Do it with Dumbbells – Place dumbbells near your workplace and pick them up every so often to get in a quick full body workout as well. I like to do what I call Multi-Joint Exercise with dumbbells:

Multi-Joint Dumbbell #1 – This multi-joint exercise focus on the upper-body by mixing several exercises into one movement. This one mixes bicep curls, military press and triceps extensions. Start with dumbbells by the waist, raise them doing a bicep curl, then over head, and then behind your head – repeat in reverse order.

Full-body Dumbbell #2 – This multi-joint exercise adds lower body exercises to Full-body dumbbells #1. This exercise mixes triceps extensions, military press, bicep curls, and full squats. This one mixes squats, bicep curls, military press and triceps extensions. Start with dumbbells by the waist, perform a squat, then raise them doing a bicep curl, then over head, and then behind your head – repeat in reverse order.

Full-body Dumbbell #3 – This multi-joint exercise adds lower body exercises to Full-body dumbbells #1. This exercise mixes triceps extensions, military press, bicep curls, full squats, squat thrust, and pushup. This one mixes squats, squats thrust, pushup, bicep curls, military press and triceps extensions. Start with dumbbells by the waist, perform a squat, a squat thrust, then a pushup, then reverse squat thrust, squat up, then raise them doing a bicep curl, then over head, and then behind your head – repeat in reverse order.

These are some quick ideas to help you fit fitness into your schedule. The thing to remember about fitness – IF IT IS NOT IN THESCHEDULE, IT DOESNOTEXIST!

Being unfit should not be an option for any public service officers when the risk of life is on the line. The Law Enforcement, Military, and Fire Fighting professions are simply a cross section of America’s fitness levels – all groups – require a certain level of fitness to do their job. A fitness regular routine may one day save their life, their buddy’s life or and accident victim’s life.

After interviewing and training police officers from federal, local, and state, and fire fighters and understanding the physical requirements of performing their work, we have developed several routines to test fitness, maintain fitness levels, as well as build fitness from the ground floor for these honorable public service professions. Check out the StewSmith.com Heroes of Tomorrow Fitness Store for more ideas to add to your own routine.

Email former Navy SEAL, Stew Smith CSCS at stew@stewsmith.com should you have any questions about Military or Law Enforcement Fitness Training. His writings help prepare the Heroes of Tomorrow for today’s military and law enforcement and fire fighting professions.